Social Media

I’m having a fan-girl moment. Someone very high up in my industry caught wind that I will soon be visiting his city. Mr. Big sent me a LinkedIn message saying he’d love to buy me a cup of coffee so we can finally meet in person. He wants to meet me. OMG. I didn’t know he knew I existed. We’re 1st degree LinkedIn connections and all, but what does that really mean?

I haven’t said much about this upcoming trip. It’s personal to celebrate my daughter’s birthday and check out some colleges. Mr. Big could only know about the trip via a Facebook comment I made in a private group, and he then contacted me via LinkedIn messaging.

Seriously. This never would have happened before social media. I would never have been on his radar, and he certainly would never know that I was planning a trip to his fair city.

I was at lunch earlier today discussing how important our connections are in respect to an entirely different topic … my employment. Who I know is important to my job so that I can bring the right resources on any given project. Who I know is important so that I can make the right introductions to bring the right business opportunity. Who I know is important to save you money, and to make you money.Who I know is important. Period.

I manage all of my relationships these days through LinkedIn and Facebook (sorry Twitter). I provide value. I share to the point where people know me. I make connections. And it is all natural and organic to me. In this past week I have identified, through status updates, new research and topics that will be perfect for my internal education program.

Social media is the most important and powerful business development tool I have ever come across. It does not discriminate. It works for introverts and extroverts, thinkers and feelers equally. It quickly allows you to separate the BSers from the value-adders. It saves time, and it allows me, with very minimal effort, to identify, connect, and develop new and deeper relationships.

My question to you is this: What are you missing out on by not harnessing your social media footprint? Most likely, you’ll never know.

LinkedIn recently rolled out their new “publishing” feature. It’s pretty interesting, and definitely something to explore. It is not designed to take the place of blogging, but can be a great middle-ground for those not quite ready to launch a blog, but have something to say, or those trying to expand their reach. For lawyers blogging on their firm’s blogs, I highly suggest publishing to LinkedIn as well, using the “post” feature for several reasons:

It will provide you more traffic to your profile.

As a “post” it will remain static on your LinkedIn profile, while “updates” disappear.

If you should leave your firm, the marketing department will either delete your content, or cleanse your name from your blog posts. Publishing them to LinkedIn will provide you an archive of your content.

We’d been hearing a lot of buzz about LinkedIn’s new “Long Form Posts” blogging platform – so we decided to do a test. We uploaded a blog post entitled The Disappearing Homepage, which had previously been published to our own blog. And within 24 hours of posting the piece, we saw massive traffic:

5,400 pageviews

131 LinkedIn “likes”

25 comments on LinkedIn

Over 500 shares on LinkedIn

>Over 1,300 people were now “following” our content on LinkedIn

21 tweets (on Twitter, an entirely separate social media platform)

30 Facebook shares (again, a separate social media platform)

12 Google+ shares (again, a separate social media platform)

Convinced yet? Hopefully yes. So where is this feature located? It’s right there on your profile page. Hidden in the “update” section. Click on the “Create a Post” pencil, and the publishing platform with launch. If you know how to use Word, or use any blog platform, it’s as intuitive as it can be: Just type, highlight, hyperlink, ad a graphic, and publish. It’s really that simple. I do have one WARNING: Do not publish every post. Right now, every time someone in my network of more than 1200 connections publishes a post, I get a notification. As of today, there is no way to turn these notifications off … so until you can, you don’t want to overwhelm and annoy your connections. So go publish a post or two, and let me know how it works for you. UPDATE: LinkedIn is still rolling this out. If you don’t have the pencil, go here to sign up for an early release.

Our sources say partners in the firms feel representing Sterling would alienate both their African American clients and corporate clients that are hyper-sensitive to controversy.

One source closely connected with Sterling tells TMZ … it’s especially galling for the Clippers owner, because a number of partners in these firms have called him from time to time asking for favors, including tickets to games.

They are reporting major firms in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which brings to mind several AmLaw 100 firms who are not shy or meek when it comes to their client base.

While I might play an uber-techie at work, I really depend upon much smarter and techier people than me to make sense out of all this stuff flying at me on a daily (hourly) basis. For instance, one of my go-to smarties is Jayne Navarre for all things digital technology in the legal space.

Via a LinkedIn Group that I scan, Eric Peter Hoffman posted the following video on the new (now implemented) algorithms of Hummingbird and Penguin (sounds like a couple of Batman villains) that finally makes sense.

It is also a simple explanation as to why law firm blogs really must use the services of JD Supra, Lexology, YouTube, Wikipedia, and the like to push our content to the top search results pages. SEO alone ain’t gonna get you there alone.

To aid attendees at our session on Generational Marketing: Strategies and tactics for engagement with Boomers, Gen Xers and Millenials, Jonathan Fitzgarrald and I deliberately included our Twitter addresses not only on the opening slide, but in the footers. (Click here for the slides)

If we wanted the attribution, we didn’t want to make you work for it. And it worked. The Twitter thread was incredible, lots of attribution to us both. Lots of feedback. And many new followers.

I just realized today, however, that for those reading this blog and wanting to share it on Twitter, it’s not as easy to find my Twitter address for attribution.

It hit me because I was reading a post from Lloyd Pearson while on my commute this morning, Chambers USA 2014-15: Get Organized via my reader. The post was easy for me to share from my iPhone, but his Twitter address didn’t auto fill. I was about to hit the tunnel, so I sent it off without attribution. Not really like me.

I have become so accustomed when using Bitly or Tweetdeck for the app to auto fill the name, but it doesn’t do so always, making it difficult to attribute on the fly unless you already know the person’s Twitter address, or are really determined.

To make things easier, I just updated my blog image that you see on the desktop to hyperlink to my Twitter profile, and added my address in the caption, and I urge you to do the same.

And when you do the update, check your mobile app version. My image doesn’t show up, so I have updated the subtitle of my blog to include it as well.

Not as pretty, but this is about engagement, conversation, and attribution.

Thank you to guest blogger Denise Nix, Marketing and Business Development Manager at Glaser Weil, for providing her insights into “Trends in Media/Pr for Law Firms: What’s Valuable and Effective Today” from the recent Legal Marketing Association annual conference.”

Really the only LMA session this year to focus exclusively on the PR side of marketing, the panel broke down the topics into The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Future. Panelists:

“Content is queen” because it is used to create relationships and connections, and build awareness. Scoring (measuring and weighing reach of content and what it leads to in terms of hires, matters and other opportunities – or engagement) is key. Engagement is what we create from that content. (Eleanor)

All firms should have media policies, written and circulated to all staff and attorneys regularly. (Kathy) Make them a part of the staff handbook. (Paul)

PR can be used to influence litigation (Eleanor) or create the right visuals on the courthouse steps (Lisa). Attorneys are being, and should be, proactive in how they write court documents on cases that are, or might, be followed by the media. While the attorney may not be able to comment on the case, key message points in the filing intro will get the point into the press. (Kathy)

THE BAD – handling bad news about the firm or its client

Have a crisis communications plan in place (Jaffe has downloadable templates on its website. ) Identify a spokesperson and practice the key message points with him or her. Keep internal staff informed – a well-written memo with your key messages is a good strategy, especially if there is a chance it may be leaked. (Kathy)

“Killing” a story is difficult, but can happen. Get partners involved if need-be (Lisa) or ask for a delay to at least get your message together (Kathy).

THE UGLY – surveys, directories and submissions

The audience groaned at this topic, but a few indicated they have received business from these.

Think about how to use the content in a new way once the information is published.

Use the information gathering step to really mine the attorneys for information about themselves and their practices to be re-purposed for other uses. Turn it into “marketing gold.” (Kathy)

Be strategic when dealing with the politics of who is being submitted and who is not (Susan). Be transparent with the reasons why and use as incentive for work/communication in the future (Paul).

THE FUTURE – social media

“Social media is the megaphone” for your content. (Kathy)

Social media is like winning the PR lottery – use these platforms to drive traffic to blogs, website, etc. (Eleanor)

Swiping through my reader this morning on the train, and I was just shaking my head over the legal blog after legal blog after legal blog going on and on about Justin Bieber’s deposition.

It’s just link bait.

link·bait

ˈliNGkˌbāt/

noun

noun: link bait

(on a website) content designed to attract attention and encourage those viewing it to create hyperlinks to the site, with the aim of improving the site’s position on the list of results returned by a search engine.

“at first, he tried creating linkbait to get his site noticed”

Sure, I expect to see it on TMZ or Above the Law. But some of the bloggers blogging on JB are legitimate legal bloggers, not a legal gossip site (which I read, along with TMZ, every day, so not a slam at the ATL folks at all).

Other than link bait, I cannot see the connection.

I’m not bashing link baiting. I do it all the time. I have one post that many years later still gets hits because of the link bait.

I also have no regrets about link baiting to a story to gain the attention of the author or publication.

However, when I do link bait, I do so with a purpose, but hopefully with some integrity. I am usually linking to a:

And, there are times, that I want to link to a popular story of the day, but I have to find the perfect story angle so that I can do so with integrity. I need to make the story part of my voice and the voice of this blog, my brand, so to speak. And, thereby, not insult my readers.

So, yeah. This post is a prime example of how I use link bait so that I can bring myself and my blog into a story of the day, without compromising myself, or you.

We all have our bad days. But when your bad day ends up in the social media viral loop, or on CNN’s website, your day just went from bad to f***ed-up.

Over in my Legal Marketers Extraordinaire group on Facebook* we’re discussing the LinkedIn rejection letter that has gone viral, as well as the founder of the latest pay-to-play on-line network for lawyers. She’s a peach. I’d link to a story about her, but, if you do your own Googling, you’ll understand why I won’t.

As background, the Sports Dude got really, really sick some years ago. It almost took his life, and it definitely impacted his career. He went from Sportscaster of the Year, to hospital patient barely able to make it back to Los Angeles for his life-saving surgeries.

But he’s back. He’s cured. He’s healthy. He reclaimed his life, including marrying his high school sweetheart, and he is claiming his spot in L.A. sports. And my Baby Boomer husband is using social media to pave his way.

It is opening the doors to the stadiums and arenas. He has his credentials to most games. He’s back in the press box. He’s freelancing for a couple outfits, and has his eyes on the big prize: The Los Angeles Rams.

Sport Dude rushed us home, threw on the Clippers game, and fired up his laptop.

He stayed up late writing a story. Posted it to Examiner.com (owned by AEG, by the way), his blog, sent out Twitter links, and then got to sleep around 2:30 am.

He’s back awake, and following the story. He’ll spend the day tweeting, connecting, pushing and nudging the story.

And there’s the lesson: No matter what is going on, stop what you are doing and get in the middle of the story. The story will not wait for you, and the conversations definitely won’t either.

You don’t have to spend the day in front of your laptop doing it. Use your tablet or smart phone while waiting in line for coffee at Starbucks, or waiting for the elevator. But make sure to get your voice in there.

Blog, comment, connect, retweet, follow.

Blog, comment, connect, retweet, follow.

Social media allows all any one of us to jump in the story, and help drive it. All you have to do is: